“Revolution is not a dinner party. It is not like writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous.” – Mao Zedong, Little Red Book.
The new coronavirus Covid-19 has been a serious test for every society it has so far touched. Not only have medical systems been stretched to (or beyond) their limits, it has also exposed flaws in the political systems of countries around the globe. Let's have a closer look at the first country to deal with these twin emergencies, the People's Republic of China.
By the beginning of February, every single region in China was placed in some kind of lockdown. Stuck inside their apartments, people in China started paying attention to their government's behavior in a way most had never done before, and they were not impressed, to say the least. Several blunders by communist officials fed into a growing sense of outrage among the population. Under normal circumstances the party would just censor away protestations, but this time they just couldn't handle the volume. Critical stories stayed online for up to half a day before the overworked censors got to them, but then half the country had already seen it, forcing the government to confirm the stories through official channels. For the first time in over a generation, the party seemed to be losing control.
Now it's probably fair to say that the Chinese Communist Party doesn't have a ton of fans outside mainland China. So any sign of weakness is often reported with barely concealed delight. When it comes to political crises in China, Westerners tend to see only opportunities. In the current climate though, it might be more important to consider the dangers. To understand these dangers we need to understand the divisions that underlay Chinese politics.
The Bipartisan Party
It is not very instructive to see the Communist Party as a single entity like the Republican or Democratic parties in the United States. If we want to make an analogy to American politics, it's better to treat it like some more ill-defined institutions such as “the bipartisan consensus” or simply “the government”. And just like in the U.S., the political establishment is split in two factions.
The split inside the party goes back to the biggest famine in human history, caused by the so-called Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962. After this fiasco, two main groups tried to shift the blame to each other. Chairman Mao pointed at the bureaucracy—the “Deep State” if you will—for not properly executing his radical visions. The educated elites on the other hand argued that his ideas were just impossible to execute and that Mao had to own his failure. Initially the technocrats won out, and Mao was shunted aside to a largely ceremonial role. In 1966 though, Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution to move himself back to center stage. After Mao's death in 1976 however, Deng Xiaoping wrestled back control from the Maoists, and his technocratic faction have been in charge ever since.
With the student protests of 1989, the party establishment was challenged from a different direction. That's not necessarily how they saw it though. They saw a mass gathering of ecstatic young people on Tiananmen Square, a regular occurrence during Mao's Cultural Revolution. So to Deng, these students looked like crypto-Maoists. That's why Deng used the only form of persuasion that Maoists tend to understand: brute force. The protesters were not Maoists though, and they went underground to form their own separate networks.
The Judgement
Which movement then would be better placed to challenge China's technocratic elites: the Maoists or the Tiananmen liberals? With no election results or polling at hand, let's have a look at Wikipedia's list of suppressed political parties in China. Judging by this—admittedly crude—evidence, liberals and democrats are outnumbered five-to-two by Maoist sympathizers. History also suggests that Maoists are likely overrepresented in the military and security services. Going back to the Long March in the 1930s, the party's military wing was always firmly under Mao's influence. So Maoists would likely have an extra advantage if things get ugly.
On top of that, the poor response by Western countries to their own Covid-19 outbreaks has compromised the very idea of liberal democracy itself. Taking all this into account, any upcoming revolution in China will probably be more a Cultural than a Velvet Revolution. I admit I was quite taken aback by the bleakness of this conclusion myself. As happens so often these days, people are always given the choice between a damaged status-quo and an alternative that's even worse. If a velvet revolution is just not on offer, is there really nothing to pursue instead? Should we just give up on our idealism and accept the way things are?
It would be cruel to leave you hanging on this nihilistic note, especially in times like these. So instead I grabbed three coins and asked my copy of the Yijing for a way out. Satisfyingly, the judgement that came back did have more than a touch of Václav Havel to it: “The joyous mood is infectious and therefore brings success. But joy must be based on steadfastness if it is not to degenerate into uncontrolled mirth. Truth and strength must dwell in the heart, while gentleness reveals itself in social intercourse.” Not for the first time, it seems the answer is living in truth.
This article was originally published on the blog of the Law and Political Economy Society at Berkeley.